By all accounts the films sound like a straight split of the book; with no mention (officially from the studios) of the second film entering into entirely made up territory (although I'm sure there'll be plenty of scope for that whilst supposedly following the books!).

(Metapraxis) Tolkien Enterprises (Saul Zaentz) own the rights (in respect to filming) of almost all aspects of The Hobbit & LotRs: so there is nothing stopping them 'inventing' plot/characters etc within the Hobbit/LotRs story framework. Look at all the pap the games cover which has no direct correlation to anything in LotRs; thats all licensed through Tolkien Enterprises. So I guess they have the scope (if they wish) to play about quite a bit within this part of Tolkien's Legendarium!

On the matter of the film rights & their sale (by Tolkien). Does anyone know anything (firmly) about this? I know various dates have been batted about (late 60's etc); but one of the most interesting parts I read about in an interview with Saul Zaentz, is that he actually met with the family in the mid-70's. Supposedly it was with Christopher and Priscilla (presumably after Tolkien's death).

I often wondered (if true) why -if the rights had already been sold outright. Mabey they hadn't. After all there was all the reputed bother with the production & distribution rights being held (for The Hobbit) by different studios. Mabey he attempted to aquire all the film rights for Tolkien's Middle-earth works i.e. the rights to the (then) forthcoming Silmarillion (?).

I think mabey (as Collectors) we should open a thread to discuss the influence of the films (the three LotRs ones & the forthcoming Hobbit films) on book collecting (or all collecting); good or bad...